Salida 76: A Ride to a Bygone Era

The starting line in downtown Salida.

In a recent ongoing effort to sample the growing number of Gravel Races throughout Colorado, I was successfully able to convince Ben and my brother to sign up for the Salida 76 this year, along with Gaper Kevin who has slogged up a number of races with me over the years. After much trial and error, I’ve found, at my age and my fitness and my sanity and my grundle, that my limit is 100 miles or less along with 10,000 feet of gain or less (preferably way less) and the stats on Salida certainly fit the bill. I learned this quite definitively at mile 85 or so on the Gunni Grinder the summer before, when Kevin and I were not even 70% of the way through the 125 mile, 10,500 foot bleeding anus slog fest. I went to readjust my area “down there” and in the process, I literally sat on my own balls. I thought they were destroyed and it took me a moment to compose myself. As I looked around at the open expanse that is the area south of Gunnison, for the first time in my life I thought to myself “I’m too old for this shit” and I vowed to never sign myself up for such a ridiculous endeavor ever again. The irony was the Gunni Grinder was Ben’s idea, and then he bailed after Kevin and I signed up. So I thought it was only fair he do Salida with us.

The start of the first climb.

Anyways, Salida 76 seemed like a great compromise. Of course, it fell on a weekend that saw the most precipitation of the summer, after what seemed like 40-50 straight days of sun and dry. But that’s all part of the experience right? It was a torrential downpour on me on the entire drive down there and I got stuck behind an excavator around Fairplay and could no longer see the road, much less a place to pass, all the way until arriving in Salida.

Chugging along.

Race morning was partly sunny though, and ideal temps for the most part. The course started right at Riverside Park in town and quickly went up a road that quickly turned to dirt and the start of a 12-13 mile 3500’ climb. No warmup but it wasn’t insanely steep and it was nice to get almost 50% of the vert out of the way in the first 2 hours.

Just after a rain storm rolled through.

After an interesting descent we reached Aid 1, and the sky was starting to look pretty grey. I’ve implemented an electrolyte heavy fluid plan to my rides this summer, along with 3-4oz of maple syrup added and a Honey Stinger waffle ingested every hour. At the aids I slam whatever fluids remain and house half a banana and a handful of peanut M&M’s and this seemed to work well for me that day.

After Aid 1 is where the day got interesting, both from a course and scenery perspective. I honestly knew nothing about the area NE of Salida, it had never registered on my radar for any reason. While a nice area with rolling hills, it appears to be a part of the state where a certain portion of the population reenacts their favorite Breaking Bad scenes. Definitely a plethora of bombed out trailer meth labs galore, some of which still appeared to be occupied. I tried not to make eye contact and just peddled faster when needed.

Aid station number 3.

Also – the mud. I still can’t believe I was able to remain on the bike the whole day. Immediately after leaving Aid 1, the mud started and forced people off the “road” on to whatever alpine tundra was dry enough to get through. The race crew provided these paint mixer sticks the day before, but to be honest, the most effective way to shed the mud was to wait until you reached a long and dry enough downhill and just bomb down it, flinging the clumps in to oblivion (and riders behind you).

Not long after Aid 2 is when the rain started up again. Again, remaining on the bike was a chore, but fortunately for us, roughly 170-180 riders had gone before us, providing packed down mud lanes, wide enough for a 45-50MM tire to teeter on. You needed laser focus here cause if you veered 5 inches to the left or right, you were done for. This was probably my favorite section of the race as it was just me, Ben and Kevin laughing and yelling deliriously, bombing through the mud, longing for a ray of sunshine.

More weather about to roll in.

Just as it started to come down pretty good, it all of a sudden stopped and the sun and blue sky showed us the way home back to Aid 3. It got a little sloggy and I’d be lying if I didn’t yell out some 4-letter words on behalf of my undercarriage. Once we reached Aid 3, it was full on sun and blue sky, but a ridge to our west blocked the impending hellscape headed across the Sawatch Range valley our way.

Finished.

The final climb beyond Aid 3 was annoying, moderately hellacious – but it was short. I got in my absolute easiest gear and crawled up a 12-13% headwall and before I knew it, crossed the finish line. The race directors intelligently made the final 13 miles of the course untimed, since its all downhill and deterred anyone from going full bore and risking death to not even finish on the podium. As long as there weren’t too many cars in the way, this was a great way to end the race, with cold beer waiting for us at the finish line.

Beers at Tres Litros later that evening.

Ben and I, after more than a couple libations later that evening, decided we hadn’t spent enough time on the saddle that day and befriended a local Salidan who offered (basically forced us) to ride his single speed cruiser bike that was lit up like a Christmas tree. It was harder than it looks.

All in all, this was a great race with a lot of character, a good amount of riders and solid comraderie between the 4 of us. We lost Hugh about 5 miles in to the day, but he said before the race he was gonna “go his own speed and not a mile per hour more”. I will continue to find new Gravel Races that take me to new parts of the state, but this is one I’ll definitely return to in the near future.

Thanks for reading.